Adios Mexico

4 Feb 2013

Kory went to work this morning for a few hours so he could finish framing in the steps he’s been working on.  Kaleb joined him after a bit and they completed the job.  It’s now ready for the concrete mixer to show up.  Since it wasn’t going to come today, there was no point in hanging around so we left Rancho Betania this morning, as planned.

I cleaned up everything in the RV as best I could while the boys were gone.  I washed dishes, cleaned out the frig and shook the rugs.  Everything got put in its place and we were ready to hit the road just before lunch.  We said our good-byes to everyone, especially Bob and Yvonne, and we were off.  It was bitter sweet, since they said this would probably be their last year at the camp.  Bob has gotten it to a place he feels they should be able to make it on their own – as it sleeps and feeds 300.  The remaining cabins and dreams for the property will be left up to someone else’s legacy, but he’s certainly made his mark on that place and he should be proud.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way out of town to buy Kory some of those fat free tortilla shells.  They only had about 10 boxes, but I could have easily purchased a dozen cases of them as they are so good, and healthy, as that kind of thing goes.  Now, to keep Kory from eating them all up in a week will be my only challenge.

Another stop at the church to see how the vision clinic was going, and then we really were on our way.  They only took the first 150 customers today, so they were already turning away people by the time we showed up.  Rows and rows of people were sitting around waiting to be seen.  It was quite the deal. 

This morning at coffee break, a local woman gave her testimony about how she, her six kids, her drug-addict husband and his parents all gave their hearts to the Lord four years ago when another group came through with a vision clinic.  It was just the vehicle Christians used to reach them.  She said they handed out a tract and people prayed for her.  She was in a place in her life where the gospel was what she needed and it had a profound affect on them all.  Unfortunately today, I didn’t see a prayer team with this vision clinic, nor were they handing out tracts, so I guess different groups handle things differently.  They expect to see 1,000 people this week.  Incredible.

The drive out of Mexico was thankfully, uneventful.  I was warned ahead of time to get rid of all my produce, but I didn’t realize it also meant getting rid of the trash, so when we got stopped at the border and inspected, I had to go through the trash and separate out all the fruit peelings from the garbage so they could be properly disposed of by our ever so efficient federal government employees.  Too funny.

As we approached Tucson, we were smack in the middle of rush traffic and we needed a Costco, Sam’s Club and Trader Joes, so we just took the first exit in order to get out of that traffic.  The side streets weren’t much better.  I had to order a new refrigerator for one of our apartment units in Seattle, and as it turns out, Sam’s Club didn’t have any, so I just used their wi-fi signal to order it from Costco.com.  Ironic.  And the glasses I got at Costco that needed some repairs, they fixed at Sam’s club for free.  Ha.  We never did make it to Costco, except on-line, because Sam’s Club also had gas.  But Trader Joes provided all the snacks and organic veggies we’ll need this week so we are set. 

I didn’t feel much like making dinner, so we stopped at a buffet restaurant called Sweet Tomatoes.  It’s an all you can eat salad bar but they also have soups, pastas and baked potatoes.  It was perfect and fit Kory’s diet to a tee, but the irony there was that we spent more on that dinner than we spent all week on groceries in Mexico.

Our rig got gassed up, and long after dark we headed east out of Tucson to avoid any more rush traffic tomorrow morning.  I was hoping to spend the night in a Walmart parking lot somewhere east of town, but I guess they must get overwhelmed with RV’s down here as every place we passed had a “no overnight parking” sign so we are spending the night in a rest stop between noisy semi-trucks.  Good thing we brought ear plugs.

Kaleb is more than a little excited about Space Academy next week.  I’m still not certain what Kory and I will do for the days he’s gone but I’m sure we’ll come up with something.  At least we won’t be sick.